


Sein Herz

by mimorjam



Category: Black Mirror, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, I am stealing technology from Black Mirror to save my gays, M/M, Major Spoilers for Uprising, Mako is in HOSPITAL WITH NO LASTING DAMAGE MY GIRL IS A-OKAY, but thought id tag it just in case, hermann gottlieb is braver than any us marine, lil mention of drugs, my boys deserved better, newt did nothing wrong, not massive, pacrim 3 make it more gay challenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-08 02:43:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14095362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimorjam/pseuds/mimorjam
Summary: After the events of Uprising, no one knows what do do with Newt, or if he even still is Newt... Of course, Hermann won't give up on him that easilyOr the one where Newt gave up his head to save his heart





	1. Chapter 1

It had certainly been a stupendously idiotic idea, but Hermann did it anyway. He stood, leaning heavily against his cane, directly between the chair and a sleek, curved pane of one way glass.

“Hello, Newton,” he fought to keep his voice steady as the thing wearing Newt’s face snapped its eyes open.

“Hey Herms!” it responded, sending icy cold dread down Hermann’s spine; the voice was a perfect recreation of Newt’s, but the grin dripped with malice. “’Bout time you showed up,”

“How are you, Newton?” he asked, carefully readjusting his standing position to ensure that Jake and his entourage of higher-ups could monitor the exchange from behind the glass.

“Ya know, no one’s really asked us that,” it turned Newt’s face, tilting it to the side as far as the restraints would allow. “We’re a bit pissed off about, you know, the whole giant clumsy robots thing – that sucked, by the way. But, Hermy, we’re pretty optim-“

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Hermann tapped his cane against the smooth floor, watching glowing blue eyes flick around as if following the sound’s echo bouncing between the sides of the cell.

“Oh! You wanna chat to him? C’mon Hermy, don’t be like that - really thought we had something,” it pouted, clearly straining against the bindings like it wanted to wildly gesture as Newt would have. 

Hermann kept his expression as blank as possible.

“We would roll him out for visiting hours, but the thing is...” its eyes were faintly ringed with red, irises pulsating with bright blue as it stared at Hermann beneath heavy eye-lids. “He doesn’t want to see you,”

“You think I believe you?” Hermann cursed the tremor that shot through his body; this was a test, a test to see if Newton could be reached and if the observers behind the glass couldn’t be convinced that the real Newt was still in there somewhere because Hermann couldn’t keep it together- he took a deep breath and desperately fought to keep his rapidly spiralling thoughts in check.

“Doesn’t matter if you do, or if you don’t. He doesn’t want to see you,” it curled Newt’s mouth into a twisted snarl, the once soft (so, so soft) skin on his lips cracked and dry.

“Did he tell you that?” Hermann felt the eyes of his superiors scrutinise the broken man before him. Perhaps if the creature confirmed that Newt was still in there, even if he couldn’t be reached, they would grant Hermann the time, money and equipment he needed to pull him back using the power of science. 

It just laughed.

The sound was unmistakably Newt’s, but it was almost layered with different distorted pitches all combining into an inhuman, grating echo that would no doubt feature heavily in Hermann’s inevitable nightmares. 

“He doesn’t want you to know how many nights he spent begging us to just kill him – it is truly amazing the extremes a flimsy human body can endure... and oh, Hermy, he endured them all. He doesn’t want you to know how he eventually agreed to our demands if we swore to leave you alone, to never touch his precious-“

“He agreed?” Hermann distracted himself from the sensation of his own heart breaking by watching luminous pale blue veins lethargically pulse up not-Newt’s neck.

“He gave up his head to save his heart,” the Precursors laughed, a dry, bitter, humourless sound. 

Hermann, swallowing a lump in his throat, glanced down at the comm.link on his wrist, the screen lit with a message from ‘J.Pentecost’ reading, **‘GOTTLIEB GET OUT OF THERE’.**

His head was swimming with a sudden burst of sound and colour; everything from the Drift to the clumsy, elated kisses they’d shared after the War Clock stopped – all his thoughts and memories of Newt exploded like flares behind his eyes as tears blurred his vision. His heart?

“He’s so scared, Hermann,” the inhuman voice was back, but he wasn’t paying attention to it. 

_His heart._

“He’s fighting, still, after all this time, he’s fighting us. But he cannot resist because he is weak-“

**His heart.**

Without fully thinking it through, Hermann lunged forward and clasped Newton’s wrist, latching onto cold, familiar, tattooed skin between the chrome restraints. 

“Newton, Newt, listen to me,” he hissed, close enough to count the delicate freckles across Newt’s nose; if the situation were wildly different, perhaps he would have. Instead, he stared into the swirling, unnatural pools of Kaiju blue eyes, “tell me how to help you. I know you’re scared, I know you’re tired, but for God’s sake man, you don’t have to do this on your own anymore. Tell me how to help you, Newt, please. Will you do that for me?”

As soon as he’d finished, Newt’s entire body began to shake, a gut-wrenching cry of pain and effort tearing from his gasping mouth. Hermann didn’t let go as the blue shrank from Newt’s neck, as dark blood slipped from his left nostril, as his own tears fell against his cheek. 

“Newt, will you tell me how to help you?” he asked again, gentle but loud enough to compete with the impressive volume of Newton’s screaming. If his heart wasn’t already in pieces, it most definitely was then.

“Hermann?” the blue cleared from Newt’s eyes like steam climbing out of a midnight coffee cup and left tearful green irises that were unmistakably Newton Geiszler’s. “Herm, Hermann, H-“

“It’s okay, Newt, breathe, you’re going to be alright,” Hermann cupped his face, other hand tracing the ink on his wrist absently; he didn’t need to look at the pattern to know it fluently. 

“Herm, all those people,” Newt shifted uncomfortably in his restraints, suddenly looking so small.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Hermann leaned forward to press a simple, quick kiss to his cheek. “It wasn’t you,”

“Y-you have to help me,” he leaned his face as close to Hermann’s as possible, the metal strip across his forehead threatening to cut into his skin. “I can’t hurt anyone else, Hermann, I can’t,”

“You won’t. Tell me what you need,”

Newt’s eyes widened, his breath far too erratic to be healthy, “they’re coming back, Herm, I can’t-I can’t do this for much longer,”

“Then be quick,” Hermann urged, desperation chasing away the last of his self-control. “Newton, anything, tell me what to do!”

“I-I’ve tried everything-“ Newt looked feverishly around the cell, as if for inspiration, but his clammy hands grasped Hermann’s jacket despite the cuffs nailing him to the chair. “Hermann, Herm, ple- Hermann, I’m sorry-“

Newt’s eyes rolled back in his head, his body abandoning its sobbing and tremors to instead go limp, propped up only by the chrome steel bands securing him like a prisoner. He was still and silent, but his heart was still beating.

_His heart._

Hermann brushed his lips gently against Newt’s, whispered a hushed promise wrapped in a prayer and finally let go of his wrist. He’d done it, he’d broken through, if only for a few precious moments – Hermann felt a mixture of pride and dread settle in his stomach as he scooped up his cane.

The door opened with a hiss of paranoid airlock security and a distressed looking Jake Pentecost extended a hand to help the physicist out of the tiny chamber.

“Doctor Gottl-“

“I’m perfectly alright,” Hermann lied, convincing no one in the near vicinity as the door slammed behind him, leaving Newt alone with those _beasts_.

“We’ll help you,” Jake promised, clasping Hermann’s shoulder. The other high ranking PPDC officials shifted uncomfortably, but Jake ignored them. He looked just like his father, earnest and radiating pure determination. Hermann just nodded, hyper aware of the tears still slipping down his cheeks. “You’ll have whatever we can give,”

“Thank you,”

“If anyone can save him,” said Jake, pressing something into Hermann’s slightly trembling hands. “You can,”

Hermann looked down to see a small tablet, a picture of him and Newt grinning after saving the world lighting up on the screen, “I hope you’re right.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I might have gotten a little teeeeeny bit carried away with this and now it has grown from a little seedling one shot into a big ol' multi-chapter fic oh dear ~~~ enjoy :)

Trying to help Newton Geiszler was apparently much harder than Jake had first anticipated; he and those around the PPDC who’d also volunteered spent hours upon hours down in the labs, principally to ensure that Gottlieb was actually eating and sleeping. Of course, life at the PPDC carried on vaguely as usual; personally, Jake’s time was split between visiting seminars about Jaeger tech developments, helping Herc out with political standoffs, training vigorously with Nate, being caught off guard by various alarm drills and babysitting Dr Gottlieb as he searched for some kind of breakthrough like a man possessed - Jake realised how that comment may have been in poor taste...

One particular day of helping Gottlieb as best he could, Jake found himself sat in the lab, pouring over an article written by Newt himself years ago. He’d never been one for science or academia, but that wasn’t to say he didn’t understand it - he just preferred to take direct action. He wondered how his father would have handled the whole genius-possessed-by-alien-gods situation; probably with effortless, stoic authority and soul to spare. But Stacker wasn’t there – Newt and the rest of the world would have to make do with a different Pentecost. Jake tapped his wrist comm.link, prompting an illuminated live feed of Mako’s hospital room to show up on the screen. Two Pentecosts, half the PPDC staff and one very dedicated physicist; that’s what Newt had. They’d do it, they’d bring him back.

***

Hermann was aware that his mission to save Newt has begun to seem a little... deranged. The staff of the PPDC were, of course, granting him the time and resources he needed, but what surprised him most was how much time individuals had given up for him, for Newt. With Mako recovering slowly, Herc Hansen reinstated as temporary Marshall and the unknown threat that came with Pentecost and Lambert’s new mission (to enter the Breach and wipe out the Precursors once and for all), Hermann thought his own personal crusade would be put on the back burner, as it were. 

“I don’t wish for you to take this comment the wrong way, Ranger Pentecost-“

“Jake,” the ranger in question corrected without looking up from the tablet he was scrolling through, as if insisting that Hermann abandon the rigid formalities he clung to was becoming something of a habit. 

“Yes well,” he coughed to cover the way his voice quivered. _‘Call me Newt, Herms, how many times do I ha-‘_ “Incredibly grateful as I am, I just have to know why you decided to help me,”

“I know what it’s like to lose everyone, I mean, my family,” when Jake spoke seriously, he reminded Hermann so much of his father. “I’ve got Nate, sure, and Mako’s on the mend, but Nate... if anything happened to him- he’s my Newt, if that makes sense? I had to help you, because I can’t imagine myself in your situation,”

“Thank you,” Hermann spoke softly, appreciating both the honesty and bravery an admission like that took. “Everyone’s been so-“

“Hey, man, you’d do the same,” Jake smiled, trying his best to lighten the vaguely awkward, solemn mood in the fluorescent-lit laboratory. “Just hope it’s all worth it,” he gestured to the scattered papers, half assembled PONS systems and flickering holo-projections of simulations. 

“I’d hate to jinx our progress, but I think I’ve found something,” Hermann grabbed his cane and hobbled over to the larger hologram projector, throwing the data from his tablet into the previously empty space in the centre of the lab. 

“ _‘Smartelligence’_?” Jake asked, spinning his chair to face the illuminated logo gently spinning. He folded his arms across his creased uniform shirt, “weren’t they shut down years ago?”

“Before the war, yes,” Hermann nodded, flapping a hand at the hologram. The dust-like pixels dissipated and hastily reformed into another logo, “along with their US counterpart TCKR Systems,”

“They were dodgy as fuck, man,” Jake narrowed his eyes incredulously, tapping his own search into his tablet. “See? ‘TCKR shut down following investigation into gross humanitarian negligence’ oh, and ‘UK research facility _Smartelligence_ accused of a near endless list of crimes against humanity’. And there’s the classic victim stories ‘TCKR and _Smartelligence_ erased my son’s brain’ ‘Cyber-Conscious Cookies cause critical condition in Californian child’ - Doc, these people aren’t good news,”

“I know that, Jake,” Hermann sighed, “which is why I’m not going to get involved with ‘these people’, just one,”

A series of still images of a short man with floppy blond hair were thrust from Hermann’s tablet to the floor where they popped up and slowly rotated. Jake raised his eyebrows. 

“I know what you’re thinking-“

“Oh yeah, Doc?” He grimaced. “Because right now I’m wondering about your sanity. That man? He was on the team who developed the Cookies system, right? Well he went from classy-“ he raised a hand, causing the hologram to focus on one particular photograph of the blond in a crisp suit, clasping the US President’s hands. “To cracked out,” another image of the same man, huddled against a recycling bin in some Manchester back alley popped up, creating a translucent wall between ranger and scientist. 

“The fall of their company was based on the application of their technology, not the science behind it,” Hermann shut down the holographic projector and lowered himself into a desk chair. “Their focal point was human consciousness, the isolation and replication of everything inside our heads that make us who we are,”

“Yeah, then they started torturing copies of prisoners and shoving coma patients int-“

“I know that TCKR and _Smartelligence_ aren’t to be trusted, and I also know how hard the entire UN fought to have their research and databases wiped from the face of the earth,” Hermann sighed, taking off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “But Rang- Jake, I do believe there is something to be found here,”

“You think you can, I dunno, pour Geiszler into one of those Cookie things-“

“Before I’d even consider trying anything anywhere near Newton, I would have to know the technology intimately and completely trust a well formulated plan, but,” he replaced his glasses and slid his tablet over to Jake. “I think this is at least worth an investigation, don’t you?”

Jake stared down at the pulsing dot marking the whereabouts of one of TCKR’s brightest and best on an intricate map of Sydney. 

He took a moment to re-read the various articles that his google search dragged up. His father had shadowed an officer who sat on the panel that charged both industries with the crimes that crippled them, before the war; Jake knew this was a bad idea, but Hermann’s nervousness and barely concealed desperation made something twist in his head; how far would this man go to save Newton Geiszler? And how far would Jake himself go to save Nate and Mako? The answers to both questions were obvious. 

“Okay, fine, lets go find some mad scientist in a skanky crack-hole,” Jake laughed, tossing his tablet onto the messy desk. He clapped Hermann on the shoulder. “How long d’you need? When should I meet you?”

“If you’re willing to accompany me, we leave tomorrow at four thirty. No need to involve anyone else, mind. This operation... well I dare say no one else will be as understanding as you have,” Hermann was grinning with determination, his eyes wide and distracted as if he were running through every possible outcome of their meeting with this less than trustworthy cracked-out, unethical science guy. 

Jake nodded and turned to escape the private laboratory in order to actually get back to doing the work he was paid for.  
Before the door closed, he heard Dr Gottlieb start to quietly babble into the recording system he’d programmed to log his progress with the Geiszler Project, so Newt would be able to study it when _(if)_ he was brought back safe and sound. 

Jake glanced back to see the scientist stood in front of the hologram projector, reaching shakily up to rest his hand just in front of a large scale version of the photo he’d shown him after his first visit to Newt’s cell. 

TCKR was risky, but if it could help Dr Gottlieb, Jake was willing to chance it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so for anyone who hasn't seen Black Mirror: White Christmas a) I highly recommend it cos its a BANGIN episode, b) I hope I've given an okay explanation as to what Cookies are...
> 
> Also, AO3 wont let me tag this but there's a little mention of drugs this chapter so, yeah idk if I really need to mention that here but I'm gonna do it just in case
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy my nerdy, indulgent fix-it featuring a semi-secret mission with Herms and co

Hermann checked his wrist comm.link for the eighth time, tapping his cane against the steel floor. Since formulating the plan with Jake, he’d not been down to visit Newton, despite having every urge to; even if just to receive malicious abuse from that twisted voice. He had been thinking about Newton every moment since he broke through. 

Hindsight made it painfully obvious how many practically neon warning signs Hermann had missed: his sudden disinterest in all things related to their previously wonderful relationship, the break up note _(seriously, who does a thing like that?)_ , the clothes, the terribly sudden passion for the bloody corporate sector, that one time Hermann had actually video called Newt to find him distractedly avoiding his attempts at conversation while sat in a bare room and of course, Alice? _Really?_ Of course, he knew not to blame himself, as that path led nowhere productive, but if he’d stopped wallowing in self-pity over the way Newton _broke his heart and left,_ then maybe all of this could have been prevented. Maybe Hermann would have been enough to draw him back before it went too deep. 

The arrival of two rangers dressed in discreet civilian clothes shocked Hermann out of his daze. “I thought I told you not to involve anyone else,” he raised an eyebrow at Jake who was grinning.

“Yeah, but like, Nate would find out soon enough anyway, and it’s always handy to have two sexy badass rangers on the team, right?” 

Nate raked a hand through his hair and sighed at his Drift Partner with affected exasperation, “Jake told me everything – Dr Gottlieb, I don’t have to come if it will somehow compromise the mission,”

“Wait, no, hang on,” Jake flattened his palm against Nate’s chest as if to halt any possible movement. “He’s fine with it, right Doctor?”

“I don’t see why not,” Hermann resisted a strangely Newtonian urge to shrug, keeping his hands tightly gripped around his cane. “It was mainly the... powers that be I had intended to keep in the dark about this particular endeavour,”

“Ah,” Nate Lambert had the decency to look embarrassed. “Well, I may have told Herc-“

“Oh wonderful,” Hermann huffed, briefly squeezing his eyes closed. Their window of opportunity was rapidly closing and Newton had been suffering long enough – he didn’t want to waste any more time or run into any more obstacles. Which of course was understandable. 

“I just thought that because our mark’s in Sydney and no one knows Sydney better than Hansen, so-“

“It’s alright, Ranger Lambert,” Hermann had noticed recently how everyone was treating him like a man on the edge, someone who was one bought of frustration away from a full blown breakdown – perhaps they were right. “I’m sure Marshall Hansen provided you with some insight?”

“Uh, he told me to tell you that you’re insane, but if you needed anything, he’d be more than willing to help,” said Nate, concentrating as if directly quoting a recent conversation as part of a vital report to a superior. 

“He also said ‘considering Oz is my backyard, I’d advise taking this route to the district’ then he just straight up drew us a map,” Jake pulled the folded paper out of his pocket, imitating his father’s best friend’s accent comically. 

“From memory,” Nate added, a little bit intimidated by the temporary Marshall. 

“Wouldn’t have expected anything less,” Hermann took the paper and a small smile flickered onto his face when he saw how eager both the rangers were to help. 

“Mako sent us with strict instructions to keep you safe and bring Dr Geiszler back,” Jake glanced at his comm.link, then back at Hermann. 

“Well then,” the scientist nodded, keying in his code to open the secondary land transport hangar. “You had better do just that,”

“Let’s go find a mad scientist to save our mad scientist,” Pentecost held out his fist and nudged it into Nate’s.

“Quite,” Hermann squinted at the map and noticed at the corner, in small, cramped letters a message of good luck from his old friend Hansen. Time to possibly steal a jet. 

*

As it turned out, stealing a jet hadn’t been necessary. From the comfort of her hospital bed, armed only with a smart phone, Mako had arranged a private flight for three of the PPDC’s best to carry them from the nearest airport directly to Sydney. Jake and Nate joked that they’d get there faster in a Jaeger, a sentiment Hermann actually found himself quietly agreeing with. 

Mako had also set up a live feed linking Hermann’s wrist comm.link to a hidden camera fitted in Newton’s cell. She was the only ranger (well, ex-ranger, but still) Hermann had ever met who actually obeyed doctor’s orders and stayed resigned to bed rest; she simply stated that being confined to a single room was hardly going to prevent her from running the entire base. Mako had set up the feed and when Hermann had questioned her motives, simply stated that if it were Raleigh in that cell, not Newton, she would want to be with him every moment of everyday until he was safe. The empathy of his colleag- _friends_ across the PPDC astounded him.

He stared at the live feed. Newton had not been released from his restraints, but there hadn’t really been any cause to: he hadn’t moved much since Hermann left. The only movement of note had been a repeated Morse code pattern twitched out by his left middle finger:

**.. -- / ... --- .-. .-. -.--**

The message had made Hermann’s throat tighten and his eyes water: _I’m sorry_ , tapped over and over again.

“So you know this TCKR guy?” Nate’s voice pulled him from his melancholy thousand-yard-stare. 

“He was a leading scientific mind around the time I was studying in Bavaria,” Hermann remembered the years before K-Day, before Newton’s first letter, with sour distaste. It had been a simpler time, but by no means would he wish to relive them. “I knew of him,”

“You definitely think he can help?” Jake asked, the rangers squeezed into the two seats opposite Hermann in the tiny aircraft, so close their sides were pressed against each other over the arm rest. 

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Hermann was tired of the way the obvious doubts from his two new ‘team mates’ stirred that little voice in his head which whispered about how Newton was too far gone, how he’d never save him.

“Yessir,” Nate and Jake said in perfect synchronisation, typical of Jaeger pilots, sporting twin determined grins Hermann couldn’t help but return.

*

It amazed Hermann how quickly the streets of Sydney changed from bright and polished to grimy and absolutely crawling with rats. He supposed it was the same with every major city, especially in the days after _Trespasser_ when funding was pumped into protection against the Kaiju instead of public services. Herc’s map had been incredibly helpful, meaning they stood outside an old Chinese restaurant’s back door a full three hours before they’d expected to get there. The restaurant had clearly been closed for years, bright blue graffiti splashing the rusting metal shutters with colourful messages about the end of the world. 

Nate fired up a torch and shone it at the door, which was warped and wedged on its side, slanting across the entryway. “Looks like a crack den,”

“That’s what I said,” Jake stage whispered, constantly looking over his shoulder. Hermann supposed that one being an ex-scavenger and the other being a highly trained soldier would have granted his two companions at least some degree of professional caution. “Let’s go in,”

Hermann was apparently wrong.

Nate noisily kicked the rusted door to clear a path into the restaurant’s old kitchens, rats squealing and racing out of the torch light. 

“And you’re sure the guy we’re looking for is here?” Jake grimaced at the smell as he dramatically swept his arm as if inviting the physicist into a stately home. The place was filthy, crawling with all sorts of vile vermin and eerily quiet, the screeching rats aside. 

“Positively certain,” Hermann pressed his comm.link and out shone a hologram with four points blinking within an outline of the building they were in; one blue dot, two PPDC logos and a red circle a little bit further away. “After TCKR was shut down, each influential contributor, or member of the company’s inner circle paid for their crimes by being biologically tagged. The UN wanted to ensure that none of them were ever in a position to-“

“Make millions through crimes against humanity,” Jake nodded, vaguely remembering his father telling him something along those lines. Before the Kaiju, human monsters like the TCKR whitecoats had been the biggest threat to life on earth, aside from climate change. 

“Again,” Nate added.

“Quite. Even after all these years, our friend Dr Syme’s tag is still transmitting,” Hermann flicked a finger at his hologram, which sent the animated data to the comm.links of his two ranger companions. He lightly shook his wrist and the map morphed into a three dimensional floor plan of the decaying building. “Looks like he is in the basement,”

“Of course he is,” Jake sighed, clicking on his own torch, face illuminated by the hologram.

*

Hermann Gottlieb hated stairs. 

The restaurant didn’t have a lift in the first place, but even if it had the years of neglect the entire building suffered from would have rendered it useless anyway. When Pentecost and Lambert awkwardly suggested that Hermann stay put while they retrieved their mark, he’d bristled and grumbled about refusing to be a spare part in his own mission. If even the apocalypse hadn’t been an issue for Dr Hermann Gottlieb, a single flight of stairs was decidedly not going to stand between him and potentially saving Newt.

Even if said stairs were positively disgusting. 

“Okay, when you said this was gonna be a cool secret mission-“

“Semi-secret really,”

“Yeah, thanks Nate,” Jake huffed. “Cool _semi-secret_ mission, I didn’t expect to find myself covered in rat shit and breathing in chow mein particles older than I am,”

“I’ll admit, neither did I,” Hermann took a moment to thank anyone listening that he hadn’t tripped on those _filthy_ stairs and shone his torch around, noting how the damp mould clinging to the low-ceiling was probably borderline sentient. 

“This place was definitely some sort of mafia thing,” Jake commented, shining his torch on a few paper bills of various world currencies pasted to the floor under years of grime.

“It’s like a labyrinth,” Hermann nodded. “Certainly not a place I would wish to hide for over ten years, but here we are,”

Hermann gripped his mag-light and stomped his way down an almost cave-like corridor, following the gently pulsing red circle on his hologram map. Jake and Nate shared a look the physicist couldn’t decipher and followed him.

The corridor led to an open chamber which was, in Jake’s words, a “textbook smack lair,” complete with foul looking mattresses and at least three hot plates hazardously plugged into an extension lead, which was lying in a puddle of green water coming through the roof, its wires chewed down to the copper by the scarily determined rats. 

“He should be here,” Hermann pointed to the centre of the room with his cane, enlarging the hologram on his wrist. “Right here,”

“Maybe h-“

“Right here! That’s what the tag says,” Hermann could feel cold panic bubble up from where it had been feebly repressed ever since that creature possessing Newton had seized his throat. This mission could not fail, he could not let Newt live with those _things_ in his head any longer; he had to do something, _anything to save the man he loved._ “The signal hasn’t moved in years therefore this is his last known location, and from our surroundings I deduce that he had essentially all he needed; an entire city to filch food from, copious amounts of homely comforts,” he suddenly flicked his cane out to knock a dirty biscuit tin filled with blackened spoons and needles, sending it and its illicit contents clanging across the floor. “Christ he even had power!”

“Dr Got-“

“Power, yes, of course!” he spun, hair beginning to stick to his forehead with the cold sweat that was layering itself across his skin. “Undoubtedly there was, or most likely still is, a power source around, judging by those rusty heaters and wires connecting everything. I suppose the absence of lights does raise a potential counterargument, but I propose that if this vile basement was indeed a regular meeting place for Australia’s underworld elites, then dealers, then junkies – which I hypothesise as being the most logical progression for it to end up in this state - then they must have had a way to keep their electrical usage off the main grid, as why would an underperforming restaurant need such power?”

He had begun pacing, erratically making twitchy gestures with his hands, face pulled into an alarmingly tense frown. Jake and Nate watched with dumbfounded distress. Mako had calmly instructed both of them to keep a wary eye on Gottlieb, now both understood why. The ranting continued,

“Of course, a separate powerline was brought in, but I estimate that it would have been before the war, when, naturally, the collective underworld turned to Kaiju related dealing – and considering the distinct lack of an overbearing ammonia scent or any traces of Kaiju Blue, they must have left this place to become overrun by vermin,”

“Dr Gottlieb?”

“Yes, Ranger Lambert?” Hermann stopped pacing as suddenly as he had started, fists trembling, clenched around his cane and torch respectively. 

“A-are you...”

“Alright?” Jake finished, raising his hands slightly, as if Hermann were some kind of wild animal.

“What?” He huffed out incredulously. “Honestly, Ranger, stop fretting and help me find the refrigeration unit!”

“The what now?” it was Jake’s turn to look on in utter confusion. “You’ve lost me,”

“Lost me when he started talking about heroin,” Nate raised his eyebrows, resisting the urge to rub his filthy hands down his face. Jake gave him a look as if to say _‘when the fuck was that?’_ , but neither managed to talk before Hermann started again.

“The fridge, Ranger, is where he’ll be, as I was about to explain before you interrupted to ask about my wellbeing,” he seemed to have regained some of his composure. “It’ll be the most sanitary place here,”

“If you’re sure...” Nate shrugged, pointing his torch at a grimy chrome unit across the other side of the room. He started to walk over to it, but a highly unexpected voice stunned all three PPDC members into absolute stillness. 

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” a slightly distorted British voice sounded from seemingly nowhere, prompting Nate to hastily draw his emergency handgun. “He made a right mess of himself,”

“Dr Syme,” Hermann frantically searched the room with the beam of his torch, rooted to the spot.

“Behind the toaster,” the voice provided. Hermann walked stiffly over to a strangely slimy toaster and nudged it aside with his cane. He let out a small, barely audible gasp.

“I should have known,” he said while gently taking the pristine white, egg-shaped machine into both hands, torch wedged between his arm and side. The Cookie’s blue light flickered when it spoke.

“Yes, yes you should have,” Dr Syme’s voice sounded amused. “To what do I owe the pleasure of visitors?”

“Wait a second,” Nate strode over, very nearly crushing a rat beneath his boots. “He’s _inside_ that thing?”

“Yes, and no,” it said.

“Cookies were designed to like, make copies of consciousnesses and house them, just in case anything happened to the original’s body,” Jake explained, coming to stand right behind Hermann to get a closer look at the wildly illegal technology. “But then people started to buy them as, like, digital slaves,”

“Clever boy,” Dr Syme responded, light blinking.

“So what’s in the fridge?” Jake asked, slightly squeamish expression revealing to Hermann that he almost definitely knew the answer to that.

“My old body,” it answered sounding as nonchalant as a disembodied voice coming from an egg-shaped machine could. “What do you want? Who are you?”

“Unimportant,” Hermann dismissed.

“You want my help to put those monsters back into the sea?”

“Wha- no, no. We did that ten years ago,” Jake narrowed his eyes. “How long have-“

“We want your research,” Hermann spoke decisively, leaving no room for argument. “All of it. I know where it is, but you have the codes I would need to get into it,”

The egg stayed quiet for a moment, as if considering the demand. 

“What do I get in return?” Syme’s voice matched Hermann’s tone. 

“I don’t report you to the authorities for not only disobeying the terms of your original pardon which agreed that you would never again go near TCKR Systems’ tech, and I take you back to your wife,” Hermann laid out his offer calmly, as if he hadn’t been manically ranting about powerlines just minutes ago.

“You have done your research, haven’t you,” the egg chuckled. “Do you know how long I’ve been sitting here in that charging pod? Years. Years and my only company? Rats. It’s no way to live, I tell you, no way to live! He went insane when the first monster came, left Manchester to come to Sydney only weeks after copying his brain into here, effectively preserving it. He lef-“

“He?”

“Me, keep up,” the Cookie chided.

“Pretty rude for a kinder egg,” Jake muttered, but regained focus when Hermann spoke again.

“Do we have a deal, Dr Syme?”

“You know where she is? My Emma?” it asked.

Hermann responded by holding up his comm.link showing another hologram map, this time with a single dot marking the location of Emma Syme in her home. 

“Then the damn codes are yours, I no longer require them anyway,” it listed a sequence of numbers and letters that Hermann desperately took down into his comm.link, nearly dropping the Cookie.

“Thank you,” Hermann breathed, mouth twitching into a hesitant smile at the unexpected-but-still-successful mission outcome.

“You couldn’t also power me down for a while, could you?” the Cookie’s blue light flickered. “Only I’ve been on relentlessly for... far too long,”

Hermann pushed the top of the egg-shaped Cookie down to slide over the light, stopping a slight, gentle buzzing he hadn’t noticed before. He slipped both the Cookie containing Dr Syme and its charging station into his jacket pocket and turned to the rangers.

“Well that was weird,” Nate puffed out a breath, eyebrows almost meeting his hairline.

“Very much so, yes,” he smiled. “But we’ve got what we came for,”

“Plus a morally questionable scientist trapped inside a kinder egg,” Jake scratched at his eyebrow. “D’you think we should call someone about, you know, the like, seventeen year old corpse in the fridge?”

“Probably,” Hermann admitted, shuddering with distaste. 

“Are you actually going to give him to his wife?” Nate asked, starting to retreat from the disgusting basement towards the stairs. 

“Probably,” the physicist followed. “Either her or the UN,”

“Fair enough,” Jake shrugged. “Come on, let’s go. I need, like, a four hour shower after this; I hate rats.”


End file.
